Base Reality Texts and Eutopias

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-170
Author(s):  
Andrew Milner ◽  
J.R. Burgmann
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Flight Behavior ◽  
Green Earth ◽  
Climate Crisis

The chapter opens with the observation that there seem to be far fewer climate eutopias than climate dystopias, but adds that there is a case to be made that these are likely to become more culturally significant as the climate crisis develops. It then proceeds to a discussion, by turn, of base reality texts and critical eutopias. The texts analysed include Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Earth, Umoya Lister’s Planetquake, Robinson’s New York 2140; Dirk C. Fleck’s MAEVA! trilogy and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. The chapter proceeds to argue that, by comparison with William Morris’s News from Nowhere, there is no real intratextual plausibility to the mechanisms by which eutopia is achieved within these novels. The chapter concludes with a survey of the study’s findings on cli-fi narratives.

scholarly journals Standardizing Climate Education in New York State

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid J. Paredes ◽  
Steven Farrell ◽  
Omar Gowayed
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Education Reform ◽  
New York State ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
High School Science ◽  
Model Curriculum ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
York State ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Climate Crisis

In July 2019, the New York State legislature signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act into law. The ambitious act sets targets to establish climate resiliency statewide through initiatives including reducing gas emissions, improving infrastructure, and providing job training. In response, several state senators have called for education reform to accordingly prepare the next generation for the climate crisis. We evaluate three climate education bills (S7341, S6837, and S6877) currently in committee in New York State. S7341, sponsored by Senator Andrew Gounardes and known as the Model Curriculum bill, proposes an environmental education curriculum for K-12 students. S6877, sponsored by Senator Rachel May and called the Regents Climate Amendment, makes recommendations to the Board of Regents on climate science in high school science classes. S6837, a Climate Education Grants Program sponsored by Senator Todd Kaminsky, provides support for teacher training and local climate resiliency projects. We examined these bills with respect to their effectiveness, administrative burden, and efficiency in the delivery of a climate education. We found the Model Curriculum bill to be the most effective way to educate and prepare students for the climate crisis. However, New York State must support educators with proper training and funding to provide quality climate education. We therefore recommend that the New York Senate pass the Model Curriculum bill and the Climate Education Grants Program.

scholarly journals Getting soaked? Climate crisis, adaptation finance, and racialized austerity

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bigger ◽  
Nate Millington
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New York ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Municipal Finance ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
The City

As the effects of austerity continue to ravage cities and the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, municipal officials around the world are struggling to pay for climate adaptation. Some cities have already begun to anticipate the new infrastructures that climate change will require, while others have been forced to adapt in real time as climate crises have arrived in spectacular ways. Two of the most emblematic events are Superstorm Sandy, which drenched New York City in October 2012, and the drought-induced crisis of water scarcity in Cape Town, South Africa, which was most visible between 2016 and 2018. In both cases, the cities turned to green bonds, a form of municipal finance that foregrounds environmental ambitions. In this paper, we track the forms of adaptation projects that green borrowing are earmarked to fund. Drawing from scholarship on the financialization of nature alongside recent work on racial capitalism and austerity, we find that rather than transformative municipal change each city is largely carrying on with projects that reinscribe existing inequalities in the city. In addition to reflecting inequalities already present in the two cities, however, the use of municipal debt for adaptation intensifies risks, both financial and environmental, borne primary by the poor or working class people of color. Building on qualitative fieldwork in Cape Town, New York, and across the green bond investment chain, we argue that the risks posed by climate change in the city cannot be financialized away. Ultimately, we call for the end of municipal austerity driven by national and supranational budgeting choices in favor of increasing national funding of municipal adaptation by rescaling borrowing to higher political scales that can more progressively distribute risks.

scholarly journals “Sense of Place and Sense of Planet”: Local-Planetary Experiences of Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonam Jalan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Flight Behavior ◽  
Monarch Butterflies ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
Environmental Imagination ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
The Impact

Climate change has become a harsh reality of our present times. It is happening here, there, and everywhere unbound by the spatial and temporal dimensions. The vacillating impact of such a global crisis equally demands multiple and concurrent scales in order to accurately comprehend the complexity of the problem. Borrowing the title of my paper from Ursula K. Heise’s book, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global, where she proposes the concept of ‘eco-cosmopolitanism’, this article aims at reflecting upon the globalization of the present ecocatastrophes, musing upon the local (the experiences of the working class people) and the global scale (Unnatural Migration and thereby extinction of the Monarch Butterflies) impact of the climate crisis. Ursula K. Heise believes that the ‘deterritorialization’ of the local knowledge is not always detrimental rather can open up new avenues into ecological consciousness. Giving consideration to a deterritorialised environmental vision my paper will fall back on Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior– a novel dealing with the eco-apocalypse, climate change and global warming. In providing a deeply humane account of the working people’s response to the local effects of the global crisis along with a poignant account of the impact on a planetary scale- the Migration of the Monarch Butterflies and their extinction, Kingsolver in this novel contextualizes the micro-geographically bounded human experience and memory within the larger context of the global Anthropocene thereby calling for a ‘sense of planet’ along with a ‘sense of place’- which get along with each other.

scholarly journals Public Opinion about Climate Change in United States, Partisan View and Media Coverage of the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 25) in Madrid

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3926
Author(s):  
 Antonio Castillo Esparcia ◽  
Sara López Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New York ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Environmental Initiatives ◽  
Fox News ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Climate Crisis

The research examines the news on climate change in different media, through the analysis of agenda setting and framing, in the context of a construction of media discourse. The role of the media has been relevant in the symbolic struggle of climate change images. The polarized public opinion on climate change in the USA, which has led the Trump government to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as well as the revocation of environmental policies, is analyzed by the coverage that media with Republican and Democratic political tendencies gave to the climate crisis during the 12 days of the 2019 Climate Summit. The 189 news articles broadcast by Fox News, Breitbart, CNN, and the New York Times were identified, analyzed, and contrasted. The results reveal that media with a Republican political tendency were the only ones that broadcast denial news of climate change. Breitbart reported the largest number of news items throughout the sample, mostly denialists, at 71%, using tactics related to the spectacularization of the climate phenomenon, ad hominem attacks on ecologists and politicians, the connection between environmental initiatives and “eco-fascism” or the “radical left”, as well as use of the half-truth fallacy and questionable sources associated with the fossil fuel industry. Fox News practically did not address the issue during the summit. The Democratic political tendency media did not report any kind of denial news; their information and opinions communicated environmental initiatives and climate change consequences.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document